Treasury and accounting professionals debate whether certifications matter for career success. They discuss how practical experience stacks up against formal qualifications, and whether the role of treasury itself is changing faster than the credentials can keep up.
From the German perspective, there is so far still at like university level, no big thing in teaching treasury. But what I've seen is that there is one like training or course which is a certified corporate treasurer by the German treasury association and this course is tremendously full. So there is a high demand and interest of young professionals getting into the topic because cash and the financial markets, it's an interesting topic rather than accounting or controlling which is there for like hundred years. Yeah. And well there might be people who like this kind of stuff but you know this, I call it the Millennium generation is rather interested in moving things in changing environment and treasury is the future the place to be.
Well, I have a bias because I studied accountancy and I became an ACCA and now an fcca. I actually, and for this reason I continue to think that the most important qualification is actually accounting because accounting is the language of business. To understand the balance sheet you need to understand accounting and experience in accounting I think is very helpful. Never having done either of the other qualifications, I can't comment but I've never felt that I was missing anything.
Basically I think it's like I kind of consider it like an mba. Like they say, when do you take an mba? In Greece it was very trendy for people when finishing school to take an mba. So I say if you're a business major or your finance, why should you take an MBA and do it again? So the same I think applies for ACT qualifications. So if you're like a treasurer for the last 12 years or 15 years, why should you get a qualification since you have the business experience and from the day to day it's worth it when you're finishing, I think from school in order to see all the different things that you can do in Treasury. But if you're landed in treasury and you're working for a lot of years, I don't know if it's really. If it adds value to a Treasury. Yeah, if you need to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
I just think it's an excellent idea for someone who's working in treasury to get a professional qualification to put it all into a more well rounded context and also to be able to progress their career and take more responsibility on in the future. I think the professional qualifications, excellent grounding and I think the professional associations give you a great network and the ability to speak to other people who deal with similar issues in different industries and give you a great opportunity to build up a network over time.
I think the way that at least I look at treasury today is very different from what treasury originally started. Because when I started within Treasury 10, 11 years ago, it was much about financial exposure, accuracy in cash flows and knowing your financial risk, which still is. But each time I went to work I was nervous about what are the currency rates, development and are we hedged according to what we know and all that. But I don't use one second of that anymore because for me treasury is another way of looking at things. It's changing the business so the management can take the right decision. It's much more about having the right structure on the balance sheet, having a long term plan of securing cash, using cash in ways that support the business. So I always look at this, at least now that you know dealing with exposure and cash flows, that's just the underlying thing that you have to do. You have to follow the policies and the procedures which you can have systems and programs to do today. So you don't use time on doing things eventually wrong, but you let the system do it and then you focus on the other thing which is being a business partner to the, the key stakeholders in the business. And that's not only the management, that's also sales people, purchase people and stuff like that. So I see it as a much more outgoing role you need to have today as a Treasury and you need to be on top of all the things that are happening in the fine tech industry because those are the people who come up with some of the ideas that you can pick and choose from. And it's important that you are eyeballing the fintech people because those are your friends in the future.
I think you know Treasury, I think these days it's expected that if you work in treasury or you go for a job, it's expected that you've got treasury qualifications or some form of professional qualification. Certainly at Network Rail and other organisations I've worked in, we have encouraged the treasury team to do their ACT exams and funded them. So yeah, I think it, it's great.
My personal thoughts is kind of mixed. So you could have someone, a candidate that's very well qualified. You know, we are accredited with the act. We've got Ben that works in the team and we've got another guy as well who's, who's passed all his accreditations. I just find, I don't know when I'm recruiting someone, I look for someone that shows what I call ownership and really wants to kind of develop themselves. So they might not be the best academically, but they've got a real passion for treasury and they really want they treat it like it's their own money, if that makes sense. And I can normally kind of like, see that in an interviewing process. So it's a bit of mix, right? You need, you know, when we recruit people, we give them professional training as well. But I really like the trait in a lot of people that I've seen recently, which is this ownership, like really owning things end to end. I think that's very important.
